Bug 33708 - Calc autofill should also fill right of selection (not just down)
Summary: Calc autofill should also fill right of selection (not just down)
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Calc-UX AutoFill
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Reported: 2011-01-29 22:45 UTC by David Turover
Modified: 2019-07-12 08:43 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description David Turover 2011-01-29 22:45:37 UTC
LibreOffice 3.3.0 OOO330m19 (Build:6) tag libreoffice-3.3.0.4

Expected behaviour:

 1. Type a number into a cell.
 2. Select the cell and the cell to its right.
 3. Double-click the little autofill box at the bottom-right of the selection.
 4. Autofill should fill to the right.

Observed behaviour:

 4. Autofill fills downward, ignoring the selection.

Reproduction requires a text in the cells to the left of the first selected cell and the next cell in that column.

OR observed behaviour:

 4. Autofill does nothing.

Reproducable if no text to the left. This is especially annoying when it fails to autofill cells like [1,2,3,,,,,,]


Thoughts: 

When autofill is run on a selected row, it currently seems to assume that the user intends to fill the selected row downwards.

I propose instead that the autofill fill to the right within the selection in the case of certain selections where it can be inferred that the user intends to fill to the right; the problem is in defining the cases where this can be inferred. Ideas:

* A selection where the rightmost column is empty.
* A selection where autofill would otherwise do nothing.
* A selection in which Calc would have autofilled to the right had the user started with a selection of the non-blank left column(s) and dragged the autofill handle to the right to create the selection, instead of selecting the larger area first and then double-clicking autofill.
Comment 1 Rainer Bielefeld Retired 2011-01-30 02:18:32 UTC
Effect reproducible with "LibreOffice 3.3.0 RC4 - WIN7  Home Premium (64bit) German UI  [OOO330m19 (build 6 / tag 3.3.0.4)]". But I do not know whether uatofill with double click is the intended behaviour

A first test.
0. opened new Spreadsheet
1. Typed "1" into 'B5', <Enter>
   Cell cursor moves to 'B6'
2. Mouse left click on 'B5', drag to 'B6', release mouse button
   'B5:B6' selected / higlighted, autofill control point has appeared
3. move mouse cursor to autofill control point
   cursor view changes from arrow to little crosslines
4.  double click on autofill control
    nothing happens (only 'B5' will show a red border for a very
    small moment)

Now
11. Type "x" into 'A5' and 'A6' of the document
12. redo from 2. 
    expected: like 4.
    actual: 'B5:C6' becomes selected, "2" appears in 'B6' as reported

Bug or feature?


@David Turover:
Can you provide a HELP text reference concerning intended behaviour
Comment 2 David Turover 2011-01-30 22:28:21 UTC
The help text taken from this url reads as follows:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Automatically_Calculating_Series

"You can double-click the fill handle to automatically fill all empty columns of the current data block. For example, first enter Jan into A1 and drag the fill handle down to A12 to get the twelve months in the first column. Now enter some values into B1 and C1. Select those two cells, and double-click the fill handle. This fills automatically the data block B1:C12."

Since the example is of filling below the selected text, and there is no discussion in the help of autofilling the selection itself, I am reclassifying this report as an enhancement request.
Comment 3 Rainer Bielefeld Retired 2011-01-30 23:54:20 UTC
Currently cafter heaving read Help text I believe that autofill here works as intended.
Comment 4 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 11:45:31 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 5 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 17:02:48 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 6 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 13:58:56 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 7 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 14:00:09 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 8 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 14:04:49 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 9 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 14:06:56 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 10 sasha.libreoffice 2012-08-23 10:06:55 UTC
reopening because it is RFE
Comment 11 Joel Madero 2012-10-03 18:09:14 UTC
Confirming as enhancement request. Marking as NEW and prioritizing as Medium as I think it's a functional request but might be very hard to implement. Will require assuming when and how a user thinks which has already been discussed by David.

@Sasha -- please don't reopen bugs unless there is a real reason to do so. We recently went through a large closing of old bugs that hadn't been commented on for much much too long. Only the user, a dev or a QA person who has been involved should be reopening these bugs that were autoclosed.
Comment 12 Adam Albanowicz 2014-09-17 09:04:39 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 13 Adam Albanowicz 2014-09-21 22:19:15 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 14 Joel Madero 2014-09-22 03:45:40 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 15 Alex Thurgood 2015-01-03 17:38:55 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 16 Timur 2019-07-02 08:46:39 UTC
This is a request to autofill to the right.
That's not usual spreadsheet function. FWIS, it's mostly solved via macro. 
I'm in favor of keeping RFE for anything that may be useful ut this one is in my view out of realistic dev scope.
Comment 17 Heiko Tietze 2019-07-12 08:43:08 UTC
(In reply to Timur from comment #16)
> ... this one is in my view out of realistic dev scope.

So let's resolve as WF. Over the years it also hasn't received much attention from users.